Have to disagree with you on this one I'm afraid. To call our youth policy fucking repulsive us ridiculous
We didn't just lose our first team when we went to div 3, we lost our next batch of up and coming talents
We were left with the age group below that who were thrown in at the deep end of which at the time macleod, Aird and Mackay did well so does McCoist get credit for that?
Contrary to the myth that we never gave youth a chance, We also played a lot of young players who simply just never cut the mustard - Hegarty, Cole, Perry, Crawford, murdoch, Walsh, Hutton to name a few
The likes of naismith and Cole had poor attitudes
The rest simply weren't ready for 1st team football at all
It is incredibly naive of you to expect coaching to transform every young player into a star, some will progress and others wont but a lot were given the opportunity
What I said, was McCoists "youth policy" was f*cking repulsive, the key word in that is McCoist.
The likes of Naismith and Cole had poor attitudes, the f*cking manager had a poor attitude!
McCoist "played" young players, he chucked them in, swung them about a bit, but there was f*ck all coaching going on, he hardly "coached" the first team, some of the kids he "played" were given random out of nowhere no logic appearances.
He bombed out the likes of Little and McKay despite them playing well as quickly as he could.
The reason some of those mentioned didn't "cut the mustard" was massively in part thanks to the complete reckless abandon with which McCoist guided their careers TBH.
Lets not get as fit as we can, lets get fitter than part time sides
Lets not work on tactics, lets play darts
Lets not question players standards and ethics, lets play Ian Black
That is every bit a f*cking repulsive environment TBH
A "coach" like McCall would have worked a decent clutch of players throw the ranks with him and took them to the table by the time we were promoted, would they have been world beaters, no, would they have had to be? No, they would have had to have been competent slightly talented players to manage the wants and demands being asked of them.
Two examples, Andy Little and Barrie McKay would have offered way, way way way way way way way way more than Jon Daly and Kris Boyd were by the they signed, but McCoist had to take the easy option and he generally did it every.single.time - and Jon Daly was a "successful" signing
These things were all haunting enough at the time, but the H and H McCoist years utterly floods it all back, the idea he couldn't have done more for a lot of these players is complete garbage, however "poor" most of them were is an absolute shining example of his "coaching"